Iran: The Stuxnet 'total attack' of industrial systems

Iranian officials confirmed that the Stuxnet worm infested at least 30,000 PCs running Windows in the country, on Saturday 25 September 2010 many Iranian news services announced.

Last week, Iranian Atomic Energy (AEO) experts also reported meeting and discussing how to remove the malware.

Iran: The Stuxnet 'total attack' of industrial systems Picture 1
Stuxnet worm (worm) has infected at least 30,000 Iranian PCs. (Illustration)

Many security researchers for Stuxnet are sophisticated malware never seen. In mid-June 2010, Stuxnet was discovered for the first time by VirusBlokAda (a little-known security company in Belarus). A month later Microsoft acknowledged, the goal of worms is that Windows-based PCs are used to manage large-scale industrial control systems (these control systems are called SCADA) in manufacturing and apparel companies. public service.

According to researchers from Symantec antivirus company, Iran has been the worst affected by the Stuxnet worm. Nearly 60% of the first PC detected Stuxnet infection is located in Iran. Some argue that Stuxnet was designed to cripple Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor.

The Mehr news agency (based in Tehran, Iran) said Mahmoud Alyaie, official of the IT department of Iran's Ministry of Industry and Mining, said 30,000 IP addresses in the country were contaminated with Stuxnet. Many computers can access the Internet through a single IP address, so the total number of infected Windows computers can be significantly larger.

A working group of experts from several Iranian government departments was set up to deal with Stuxnet infection, Alyaie said. Other sources quoted by Mehr, Iran has the ability to create the necessary anti-virus tools to detect and destroy the Stuxnet worm.

Microsoft patched two of the four zero-day vulnerabilities exploited by Stuxnet, and promised to fix the remaining two vulnerabilities in the near future.